Teavana's Golden Monkey

I went to Teavana the other day just because I'm from the deep South and being in NY for the summer it was the first time I had ever seen a tea store, so I had to buy something! I forked out the money for teavana's overpriced variety and can honestly say it's not that bad. While I've heard that their variety is not as good as those by other companies if there is better I wanna try it! I love this tea! After steeping at around 185 for 5 minutes the flavors and feeling of this tea are incredible. Has anyone else recently tried Teavana's Golden Monkey?

Yeah,I've tried it and brewed it for customers.I found cheaper and better at my local china town.Also of note.The Vast consensus of users on this dislike teavana's practices and the few who defend/praise teavana post once and never return. Its the most popular thread on the whole forum.

I definitely agree! I can say that the Golden Monkey was great but after going on Adagio and looking at their prices and how they treat customers it kinda made me sick to know how Teavana treats their customers. When I was in the store I felt immensely rushed and pressured. Can't wait to try Adagio's Golden Monkey!

I can't say much about this tea personally, because I haven't tried it, but I will say one thing which I found very, very interesting, as I noticed it lately, about this exact same tea.

On RateTea.net, we use algorithms to calculate a percentile ranking for each tea which has received 3 or more ratings. This tea has only received 3 ratings, so the ranking for it is a bit shaky...but based on the relative rating tendencies of the users who rated it, this tea was bumped down to the 2nd percentile (out of 100). This is exceptionally low, lower even than Lipton's tea bags. It's a bit of an outlier, a problem with our rating system...in a sense.

It struck me as odd, so I looked into it. I looked and I found that of the users who rated it, it was rated lowest of any tea on the site by each user. This was interesting to me.

Personally, I want to try it so I can give it a rating and this ridiculously low percentile will disappear. But I do think that it says something that all three reviewers gave it the lowest rating of any tea on the site. I will say, it's extremely expensive...about 1.85 times as expensive as Adagio's.

I have some. The batch I got mine from was pretty good (and I need to use it, actually...), but it's not worth the price. SpecialTeas' (sniff!) was fantastic, especially for the price. I haven't tried Adagio's yet.

I wanted to see what Teavana was like, so I wandered into one about a year ago. I was talked into buying some Golden Monkey after asking for a light oolong, similar to Twining's Formosa/China Oolong, one of my all-time favorites.

It IS similar in taste, even if they do list it as a black rather than oolong. However, the price is WAY higher than it should be. At least you can get a decent second brewing out of it, something that they don't mention.

I found a much cheaper but similar tasting loose oolong at Old City Coffee in Philadelphia.

Golden Monkey is still finding its place in the world. It is a relatively new tea, made by farms that usually produce silver needle white tea. Golden Monkey was invented during a white tea slump, when someone came up with the idea of taking silver needle tea and oxidizing it... so it is very tippy (which partially explains the price) and mild in flavor for a black tea... Has anyone tried comparing it with a tippy Darjeeling?

garrettmc wrote:I definitely agree! I can say that the Golden Monkey was great but after going on Adagio and looking at their prices and how they treat customers it kinda made me sick to know how Teavana treats their customers. When I was in the store I felt immensely rushed and pressured. Can't wait to try Adagio's Golden Monkey!

Well yes i think the how people treat their customer is very important but if you tasted many bad teas in your life, you realize life is too short for that, rather pay a bit more but enjoy decent tea. Also if you don't buy tea thats good quality taste, it makes it even harder to believe the tea is safe to your health.Thats just a general rule i like adagios teas "from the looks" more than teavannas, no advertising for teavanna i haven't drunken any tea from them.Also i love Matts review of teas on the adagio page, thats one reason i like adagio more. Also i think teavannas page looks a bit too generic for my liking.

longhappy wrote:Golden Monkey is good. But price don't need so expensive. Some tea store only USD100/kg

i like dian hong best, i don't know the exact difference but i love how the fluffy and soft golden locks feel, not to mention the taste of tea.shame i don't know a good vendor who sells good dian hong.